Huh? How can you develop software that integrates with the Microsoft Kinect if you don’t have a physical Kinect? We have a number of Kinect devices around the office, but they’re all in use. I want to test and develop on an application we’re writing, … there is another way.

Enter Kinect Studio v2.0. This application is installed with the Kinect v2.0 SDK, and allows you to record and playback streams from the Kinect device. It’s usually used to debug a repeatable scenario, but we’ve been using it to spread the ability to develop Kinect-enabled applications to engineers that don’t have a physical Kinect device. There are just a couple settings to be aware of to get this to work.

Someone has to record the streams in the first place. They can select which streams (RGB, Depth, IR, Body Index, etc. list of streams shown below) to include in the recording. The recording is captured in an XEF file that can get large quickly depending on what streams are included (on the order of 4GB+ for 1 minute). Obviously, you need to include the streams that you’re looking to work with in the application you’re developing.

So I have my .XEF file to playback, what next?

Open the XEF file in Studio.

Go to the PLAY tab

IMPORTANT: Select which of the available streams you want playback to contain (see screenshot below)

Click the settings gear next to the playback window, and select what output you want to see during playback. This does not affect what you’re application code receives from the Kinect. It controls display in the Studio UI only.

Click the Connect to Service button

Click PLAY

You should now start getting Kinect events in your application code.

Here’s what my studio UI looks like (with highlights calling out where to change settings).Hope that helps.